Digital BW, The Print

I recently purchased some bulk Lyson Quad Black inks and empty
cartridges for my Canon S820 printer.  There are six inks labeled
black, dilute cyan, dilute magenta, cyan, magenta and yellow.  The
inks are labelled "Compatible with Canon S9000, i9100".  The After
flushing out my print head with cleaning solution I loaded the Lyson
ink cartridges into the corresponding positions in the printer.  The
Helix website, www.helixphoto.com (where I purchased the inks) says
that the inks I purchased are "For
3000/6000/6100/6500/8200/S450/S820/S450/S820/S800/
S9000/i900D/i950/i960/i9100".

Photos printed in Photoshop 7.0 with these inks are solarized and the
tonal values are all wrong. When I print an 11 step grayscale step
wedge the tonal gradation is not continuous - some intermediate gray
steps are dark gray (almost black). I don't have any Lyson paper -- I
used Ilford Printasia paper. I made a ton of test prints on this paper
of the step wedge using the profiles from Lyson's web site for the
Canon S800 and S9000 printers.  The grayscale patches were scrambled
in tone on all but two settings.  These were plain paper and print
quality 4 (worst), and transparency film and print quality 3 (the
lowest quality available at that setting).  In both instances there
was objectionable streaking.  I used print mode rgb and I do not check
the "grayscale Printing" option in the printer driver.

When I research Lyson Quad Black inks on Google I keep getting Lyson's
advertising claim: "By using simple colour curve adjustments in image
software such as Adobe PhotoShop, stunning black & white images with
tonal graduation to match traditional silver Halide printing can be
produced."  I wish they would tell their customers how to do these
"simple color curve adjustments".  Lyson's web site has no phone
number or email for technical support.

I've searched for Lyson Quad Black and Canon in this group and come up
empty.  Is anyone here using these inks on a Canon printer?  If so,
what kind of profiles and settings are you using?  If you are using
curve adjustments in PhotoShop, how do you do them?  I'm beginning to
think that if these inks work at all they only work on Epson printers.

Jim